Engagement Strategies: Motivating Your Employees – Good Communication

One non-financial manner of motivating your employees is to permanently keep them involved and informed. Please make sure that your employees get:

1.   An internal bulletin – monthly is the best, but you can select any time frame you find suitable; you can even send a survey to involve the employees in the decision concerning theme and timeline; an internal bulletin can include: manager’s message, new hired employees, promotions, HR and financial data, interviews with the team members, news and many more.

2.  Regular surveys consulting the employees on certain issues - presenting the results is very important – the employees feel involved if you do and they see it as a waste of their time if you don’t. Explaining the decision and basing it on the results is also important.

3.  Communication boards inside the company. These boards are also called “Visual management boards”. They must be placed in visible places and must include information of general interest.

4.   Periodic meetings between managers and teams – individual one on one meetings and group meetings – these meetings can be used to communicate feedback, ask for ideas, solutions, take decisions together. All are very important and advisable to implement.

Engagement Strategies: Motivating Your Employees – Proper Training and Development

One good motivating factor for your employees is training. Make sure you do the following for EACH of your employees:

1.  At least a week Induction training in order to introduce the employee in the company; for managers, consider even more – up to a month; by Induction training I mean introduction to company history, company activity, company financial, HR or any other useful details, company mission, vision, values, team, HR policies and procedures, team policies and procedures, client specifications. Al these make sure the employee becomes part of the team.

2.  Assigning a mentor – selecting an older employee to guide the new one through a determined period of time.

3.  Assess employee skills when hired; prepare a training plan for short and long term to make sure skills are improved allowing the employee to perform better and even to get promoted. Offering trainings and development opportunities shows the employees you care. Some of these trainings may be internal – so with lower costs.

4.  Helping the employee pursue higher education. If company budgets allow it, paying for employees certifications and studies, even partially helps with the motivation.

5.  Talk to the employees and the managers about their training and development needs and try to fulfill them.

Engagement Strategies: Motivating Your Employees - Proper Recruitment and Selection

Please don't consider this title as confusing - recruitment and selection can be considered a motivation factor.
How exactly you may say? Well...here's what you can do in terms of recruitment to motivate employees:


1. Selecting the best candidates according to job requirements - this creates a good image and confidence about the HR department - people have the courage to come to you later on for advice, this makes sure that the candidates selected fit the team and work well with their team members, this helps create a strong team; the team manager has the possibility to choose his/her team members making sure the team is fit to work together. All these characteristics of a team motivate the team members.


2. Discussing with the candidates the strengths, weaknesses and career path for the job they apply for - this helps the candidates select the proper job by knowing all the pluses and minuses. They know what they are getting into and they don't get false expectations.


3.Telling selected candidates about salary and complete benefits package so they are aware of the full offer before accepting - this helps candidates with not having "surprises" later on after accepting the job. "Surprises" can cause people to resign sooner than expected. This will create more work for you (maybe you will select someone without thorough testing just to fill the jobs - be careful about this vicious circle), a negative atmosphere in the team and a bad image of the company.

Engagement Strategies: Criteria to Check Motivation of Employees

Here are some criteria that you can use use to check motivation of your employees. You can create surveys to see where you need to work on improvement. They have been placed into groups according to Maslow's pyramid of needs.
Lower needs must be fulfilled first:

Criteria	Category
Conditions for physical recreation	Physichological
Conditions of periodical recreation (trips, parties, etc.)	Physichological
Conditions of serving lunch	Physichological
Average time spent at work	Safety
Bonus and rewards system for holidays (Christmas, Easter, etc.)	Safety
Bonus system for results recognition	Safety
Budget for travelling	Safety
Company headquarters	Safety
IT support	Safety
Meeting efficiency	Safety
Other material benefits (car, bonuses, etc.)	Safety
Overtime compensation system	Safety
Recreation spaces	Safety
Safety of position	Safety
Salary increase system	Safety
Salary level	Safety
The Office	Safety
Transportation facilities	Safety
Work atmosphere	Safety
Degree of information upon company results	Belonging
Initial training	Belonging
Quality of collaborating with HR	Belonging
Quality of collaborating with IT	Belonging
Quality of collaborating with other departments	Belonging
Quality of collaborating with top management	Belonging
The way knowledge is transmitted within the company	Belonging
Degree of responsibility on the job	Self-esteem
Feedback from direct manager	Self-esteem
Recognition of my results	Self-esteem
Respect the employee is treated with	Self-esteem
Work itself	Self-esteem
Internal opportunities to develop your career	Self-actualization
Opportunities to develop technical/specialist skills	Self-actualization
Promotions system within the company	Self-actualization
Support offered during the activity	Self-actualization
Training system offered periodically	Self-actualization